The 2022 Winter Olympics Thread

They have every single event and every single event hits replay.

World commentators are just fine. I have seen very little of the actual NBC one’s, though the ones I have caught have been fine.

Mom watched the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team beat Russia 5-0, and she was struck by the organist playing such hits as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “The Final Countdown”, “We Can Work It Out” and “Uptown Girl” in China.

Yeah, the organist thing was weird. That’s all pre-recorded, right? There is no one in that big empty stadium playing organ…I hope.

Regarding music, I spent a lot of time watching weightlifting last year, which was basically just the straight OBS stream, sometimes without even commentary (most of the B groups). I was amused to how much Western music was played in a basically empty arena during downtime.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to not hate figure skating as much as I used to. It’s still nowhere close to my favorite event, but I can appreciate the physicality and technicality of it more these days. I think some of it’s probably maturity, but it also helps that it doesn’t seem like NBC wants to show nothing but figure skating for a week. That I have cable and that they finally seemed to figure out streaming (or that I had been watching a lot on the BBC iPlayer in the 2010s) helps too. Though I’m still using other tricks to try to make the streaming less annoying.

I enjoyed the mixed biathlon. Even though the US bobbled and didn’t come close to medaling.

I’ve been watching on Peacock. I’m satisfied with it.

What’s up with NBC taking off weekend mornings? Plenty of stuff they could cover, instead it’s the usual weekend fare. Sure, they’ve got USA network but why does the flagship network pretty much ignore the games they pay so much for? The NBC coverage decision tree seems to be: Do Americans have a chance to win? If no, fuck it.

Short track speed skating seems to be a heartbreaker. Bust your ass off for years training, then someone wipes you out in a turn and your competition is over.

Beverly Zhu aka Zhu Yi fell on her keister and finished last in the women’s short program team event Sunday.

Apparently the Chinese public aren’t thrilled with their former American recruit.

And what’s up with Alpine skiing? Last night they kept saying it would start in an hour, but it doesn’t seem to have started. Did it get delayed by wind? Was it never scheduled to have started last night?

The men’s downhill was canceled because of strong winds and rescheduled to today (or tomorrow, depending on where you live. Monday, the 7th, to be precise), 12:00 PM local Bejing time. At least that’s the latest news I’ve heard.

ETA: the women’s giant slalom is also scheduled for the same day, and the men’s downhill is planned to be held during the break between the two runs of the giant slalom.

I’m watching the men’s normal hill ski jumping. You can tell the announcers must be remote, because the color announcers keeps getting talked over. And not just a bit. Alot.

For anyone who’s wondering, Urša Bogataj, who won the women’s normal hill ski jumping, is no relation to the legendary Vinko Bogataj.

What does this mean?

I’m not sure if you are asking about the “color” or the talked over or stepping on.

The color announcer is not the one doing play by play. They provide more detail about what is going on, usually after the play by play announcer has finished describing the actual action.

The “talked over”, refers to the color announcer describing some more information, maybe about the jumper, and the the play by play guy just starts talking before he is done.

Kind of Luke in a zoom meeting, several people trying to talk at once.

Whatever was going on, these guys were both talking at the same time.

Very annoying.

NBC gave a lot of time to the 15k + 15k skiathlon XC event. Granted it isn’t prime time, but it is the same time slot as early Sunday football games. Even though I am a recreational XC skier, it is not the most exciting sport to watch (esp. when there are large gaps between competitors )

Brian

The alpine events are my favourite. Downhill particularly. It is one of those events that is deceptively simple to watch but if you ski yourself you know what a good run looks like and the challenges it presents.
The skicross and snowboard cross is fun as well.
The freestyle stuff doesn’t interest me at all. I find it impossible to distinguish the good from the bad short of them actually face-planting. Anything that gets marks for “style” ceases to be a sport for me.
Curling is always good fun, it has the same sort of tension-building ebb-and-flow that something like snooker has.

As I haven’t really been watching, can anyone tell me how the snow conditions are? I heard that all of the snow is artificial, and I’ve heard it’s not as good for skiing and other winter sports as the natural stuff.

Gold medal ski jumper (normal hill) is Kobayashi, as far as I know he did not hack the computer. :wink:

Brian
Ps just saw the NZ team did do the Haka in celebration of their first Winter Gold :grinning:

I’ve watched a ton over the past 5 days. I lucked into a few days off due to inclement weather but alas, I return to work tomorrow.

I’m a teacher and plan to have one device have some kind of Olympics running. The kids will probably think I’m cool, though I won’t actually be able to watch it the entire time. I may put it on the big screen while they do their classwork.

Anyway, the US Women’s hockey team seems to be a clear favorite for gold.

I hope Nathan Chen can somehow win gold in men’s figure skating. I don’t think the US skating team has much of a shot at another medal…except maybe a top 3 in Team Figure Skating, an event I had forgotten about until it started.

Yay for technology! Recording everything the Dangerette and i might wanna see - hockey, X-C skiing and biathlon. Ignoring the rest.
I “get” to watch Alpine ski practices almost everyday at work as a Patrol Room EMT. These skiers could be doing Slalom or that Oversize-Better-Then-Average-G-Down-Heading event.